I'm not sure that's actually what the upper middle class is.
The US is >50% urban. Wealth MASSIVELY skews urban. Home values massively skew urban.
I would not be surprised if >50% of the "upper middle class" does not own an expensive SFH in the suburbs.
And, again, this is beside the point.
If income tax is reduced by 50% for the average upper middle class family, and then a LVT makes up the difference - there is no change. You're just incentivizing different behaviors.
It comes down to implementation.
Source? My understanding is that most Americans live in suburban areas. I live in Chicago, where the suburbs have 3x as many people as the city. The city population is largely split between the poorest in the region and richest, most white collar workers live in the suburbs. Seems to be true to a lesser extent in NYC, and it's hard to say there's any urban area in LA, the whole place is suburban.
> Source? My understanding is that most Americans live in suburban areas.
One variable is that it really depends on the definition of "suburb" each person is using.
Take the greater Silicon Valley area. There's only three small urban cores, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Even within those, a lot of the area is suburbs and even semi-rural and agricultural. So by that viewpoint, most of Silicon Valley is suburbs.
If you count places like Evanston, Yonkers, and Pasadena as Urban - then you get ~56% urban. If you pretty much only count places where the vast majority of buildings are multifamily - then you only get ~30%.
If income tax drops by X% and a LVT of Y% is implemented to, theoretically, keep the same revenues - some people will win and some will lose.
The idea that all of the middle class, upper class, and wealthy will lose seems absurd.
Some people seem poised for a loss - all the people living in SFH in the middle of a city where lots are worth $2M. All the parking lot operators, etc. And that's kind of the point...
Perversely, it's easy to imagine a poorly implemented LVT that incentives the opposite of what proponents want - it reduces overall tax burdens on suburbs because the "land" is less valuable than the cut land - driving people to leave the city and live in the suburbs.
It all comes down to implementation. Blanket statements seem out of touch